


A Case of Mistaken Identity

by Calacious



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 80's style bad guys, Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brain Damage, Coping Mechanisms, Feels, Kidnapping, Kissing, M/M, Memory Loss, Pre-Slash, Protective Steve, Repetition, Stream of Consciousness, Vulnerable Danny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny goes missing for four weeks, and when he returns, he's not the same. Can Steve help him regain some of the memories that he's lost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Color Green

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [FIFTEEN](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5572312) by [Swifters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swifters/pseuds/Swifters). 



> **Disclaimer** : I do not own the characters of this work of fiction and am making no profit, monetary or otherwise, through the writing of this. 
> 
> Thanks to swifters for reading through this, and letting me know that it wasn't a complete waste, and that it was worth posting.
> 
> This is imperfect, and I'm not entirely sure what inspired it. Though it says inspired by Swifters' "Fifteen" that's not entirely the case. Both of us discovered, while we were writing our stories, that we both had similar themes, and I wanted to be sure to encourage readers to check out her awesome story, hence the link.

It's gloomy. The sky more white and gray, filled with billowing clouds, than blue. The sun's shining, though, and it's warm, even with the clouds and the gentle breeze that's blowing.

Danny wraps his arms around himself and shivers, cold in spite of the heat coming from the sun, from himself. He's sitting beneath a palm tree. There's an ocean to his right, a city to his left. He recognizes none of it, though now he knows the words, and can put tastes to them.

He has no idea where he is, how he got there, and only has a vague idea of who he is. He knows his name. Danny. No middle or last name. No idea where he's come from; where he's going; what he does, or did, for a living.

He's surrounded by raucous laughter, the cries of seagulls soaring above the ocean's waters, voices that ebb and flow with the roar of the waves as they hit the sands of the beach, pulling at the shore.

The scent of fish, dead and decaying, mixes with that of coconut tanning oil and something distinctly flowery that Danny can't name, or picture. It's nauseating, and Danny presses his nose and mouth against his shoulder to stifle it.

He can only imagine what he looks like, hunched over in the white sand, shivering. No one seems to notice him, though. They walk by, chatting about things that Danny, in his confused state, cannot focus on. He catches only snippets of words and phrases. None of them make any sense, none of them have a smell or a taste: _Trade Winds...Ala Moana...Black Friday...brah...body board..._

His head hurts, and his stomach feels like it did that one time when...he can't remember, and trying to remember makes the dual hammers in his head pound even harder against the inside of his temples. He's going to be sick. Doesn't want to, because he knows it will hurt, that there will be nothing for him to evict from his stomach if it insists on rebelling again.

He needs to find someone. That's a persistent thought that he can't shake. Hasn't been able to shake since...he can't remember, doesn't try to, because of the pounding that's making his skull crack in two.

He digs his toes into the sand. It's cool, comforting in a way that nothing else is. Danny focuses on the gritty feel of the sand between his toes, curls them beneath the surface of the rough-soft sand where it's cooler, and tries to think beyond the pulsating throb behind his closed eyelids.

His head's a jumbled mess of disconnected thoughts. Faces mixed with numbers, mixed with bright, swirling colors, mixed with blurry images that Danny can't make out. And there are hands. Too many for Danny to count and keep track of. Hands that hurt him in countless ways.

He bites his lip, rocks back against the trunk of the palm tree, and tries to block out everything around him, because he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he needs to find someone.

_Find someone._

_Find._

_Someone._

_Who?_

The name escapes him, and he fears he's in danger of losing his own name if he tries too hard to remember who it is that he's supposed to find.

It's not an even trade. Danny for...someone. His first name is the only thing, besides the urge to find someone, that Danny's been able to hold onto with any real clarity.

It's why he has the headache. Why his stomach feels like it's being ripped apart, bleeding, killing him. He knows this, but he doesn't dare allow himself to trade his own name for that of someone else's, because if he loses his name, then nothing else will matter, because he will no longer exist, which is what the hands want.

Danny presses his face further into his shoulder, trying to drown out the oppressive assault of images that flit across his mind in his failed attempt to remember who it is he needs to find, and why. His own name ( _Danny_ ) almost escapes him, and he clings to it as a man shipwrecked clings to flotsam trying to keep afloat, head dipping, again and again beneath the swelling waves.

He's drowning.

It's not the first time.

He remembers drowning before.

Multiple times.

Remembers hands pushing, shoving, holding his head under cold, cold water. Remembers water creeping up his nostrils, clogging and choking him, clawing its way in past his sealed lips, and into his mouth, his lungs.

He remembers sputtering, gasping for air, throat aching, head sore when he's finally let up. It's cold, and he's in shock from the... _training? torture? punishment?_ Shaking so hard that knows he's going to fall apart. Teeth chattering loudly in his head, making it impossible for him to hear what they're...the hands that held him under...are saying.

_Green._

Everything's green. Even the dark space behind his closed eyelids.

The color is all-consuming. It's everywhere. It's inside of him, sinking into his bones the way he'd sunk, sunk, sunk down into the green morass of where he'd been. Which was...not here.

He thinks he remembers liking green. Before.

He doesn't like it now. It's too bright. Too...too...too...green.

It makes him think of death. Of moss growing on the decaying flesh of a man's severed arm.

His arm?

Danny's breath catches, and he clenches his fingers tight to his flesh, tries to picture another color besides green. Fails.

He counts his fingers. He needs to know, because he's not sure that the arm he saw with the green creeping along it, growing like moss on the limb of a tree, isn't his own.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten._

He breathes. In, out, through his nose, chokes on the remembered smell of death, stomach twisting hard even though he's relieved that the green arm isn't his own. It's someone else's though. Should he care? Was it the arm of someone he knows...knew?

Swallowing convulsively, Danny's fingers dig into the flesh of his arms, bruising himself as the hands of others had when they'd held him down trying to drown the fight, and answers to questions he doesn't remember being asked, out of him.

They'd tried to drown the memory of his name from him, too. But he kept that. Kept both of his arms, and all ten of his fingers and toes.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten._

Twenty digits altogether.

Twenty digits, four limbs, one pounding head, an angry stomach, and a name.

Danny.

His name.

His arms.

His fingers.

His toes.

All of them intact, and trembling with cold and some unidentifiable fear; and underlying it all, the color green.


	2. Cigarette Burns on a Torso

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chin is disgusted by what they have, and have not, found. There are no answers, and he's got a feeling that time, if it has not already done so, is running out for Danny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imperfect, please forgive any errors. 
> 
> Let me know if you like.

"Steve, we'll find him," Chin says for what must be the hundredth time. He's lost track.

He feels like a broken record, but can't help it, because this is Danny he's talking about, and he can't just be gone. Not like that. Not after they've spent four weeks, three days, and three and a half hours looking for him.

"Chin's right, Steve," Lou says, passing them as he makes his way onto the plane, carrying bags of evidence with him. He doesn't spare either of them a glance, ducks his head as he enters the plane.

"We'll find Danny," Lou's voice resonates in the compact interior of the plane, confident and certain.

"He wasn't on Molokai," Steve says, voice flat, hands clenching into fists as he boards the small aircraft that will take them back to O'ahu. "It's the only lead we had."

"It wasn't an empty lead, Steve," Chin reminds him, clamping a hand on the younger man's shoulder that Steve immediately tries to shrug off. Chin won't let him.

"That's what bothers me," Steve says.

It bothers Chin, too, because what they'd uncovered at the site where they'd expected to find Danny is nothing less than barbaric by anyone's standards. He knows that Steve, however, saw something different, significant, in the equipment that they'd found, something that had sparked a memory. Not that Steve's sharing it with any of them just yet.

Some of the instruments they'd found had been rusty, some were covered in blood, possibly Danny's. Evidence of waterboarding, and other tortures were unveiled as well.

Drying pools of blood on cement floors. The lingering scent of burnt and decaying flesh. Bloody fingerprints in a small, windowless room. Recordings of haunting sounds - babies crying, children's laughter, dripping water, piano music - stuck on repeat, attached to speakers, piped into various rooms, each of them dark, dank places with the frayed ends of rope and remnants of bodily fluids left behind, giving them a partial picture of what might've taken place there.

Chin imagines that he can still smell the thick scents of fear and despair that had lingered in each of the rooms. The memory alone threatens to choke him.

Chin closes his eyes against the onslaught of images, none of them good, that have been conjured by what they'd found.

A headless, armless, legless body - _not Danny's,_ he tells himself- chief amongst their finds, had been particularly harrowing. He'd almost thrown up at the sight, Kono had. Steve's jaw had merely clenched, and he'd walked away, knowing, by some preternatural instinct, that it wasn't Danny's, or maybe he just hoped it wasn't. Lou had looked haunted.

Kono had taken pictures of everything, and they'd cataloged and bagged every damning piece of evidence they could find to bring back to O'ahu to process in their labs, because Molokai lacked the necessary resources to conduct a thorough investigation. The authorities there hadn't even known about the facility. It had been in a remote location on the island on an unused road.

Steve estimates that it's been there for decades, used off and on by whatever group took Danny. They aren't going to leave it standing. Official parties - military and police - will be sent to dissemble the facility piece by piece just as soon as they can get the ball rolling. They've already called the governor and spoken with him. He's on board with the project. Wants them to catch whatever group is behind the facility, and the torture that takes place there.

There's nothing linking Danny to that facility, other than the lead they'd gotten from Kamekona. A word here and there about the lost detective's whereabouts, all pointing in the same direction - Molokai.

The why of it, though, was, and still is, unclear. They still don't know who took Danny, or who the damaged torso, now sealed up in a body bag, belongs to (it can't be Danny; Chin won't let it be Danny). They'd heard of no other kidnapping besides Danny's, though, and found nothing that will help them identify who the torso belongs to - no head, arms, legs.

The evidence of cigarette burns, whipping, and contusions prevalent on the hacked body, offer none of them solace, but rather nightmares that come beating at their consciences in the light of day. If that kind of damage had been inflicted on some nameless man who was killed afterward, then what had been done to Danny, and was he still alive, or were they chasing after a ghost?

"He's alive," Kono says, as though sensing where Chin's thoughts have carried him.

She's not looking at him, Steve, or Lou, her gaze, instead, is focused on the greenery outside of the airplane's window as the pilot prepares for takeoff. She's pale, and there's a slight tremor to her hands which lie clasped tightly together in her lap.

Steve doesn't say anything in response, Chin doesn't either. Lou grunts and nods. They all stare straight ahead, lost in their own dark thoughts as the plane takes off, shaking and juddering due to its small size.

Chin knows that Danny would hate this plane. That thought almost makes him smile.

He wonders how Danny was brought here. Was it by plane, or by boat? Had he been conscious, complaining, fighting until he could no longer fight?

He hopes that Danny gave the men who'd taken him - whoever the fuck they are - a run for their money, that he made at least one of them bleed before whatever it is that had happened to him, happened.

Chin's not going to lie to himself, and pretend that Danny's okay, that none of the instruments of torture were used on him. Lying to himself would be like lying to Danny, and denial's not going to help Danny when they do find him, because they _will_ find him, and he will be alive when they do. Alive and complaining about the gloomy, yet warm weather that they've been experiencing lately.

Winter in Hawaii is an ongoing point of contention with Danny, in that he maintains that it's not at all winter-like. It's not cold enough, it's too wet, the sun still shines brightly even when there are grey clouds present, and then there are the rainbows, almost always present after a hard, or even gentle, rain.

According to Danny, it's unnatural. No one has been able to convince him otherwise, and Chin is looking forward to another round of Danny's why Hawaiian winters suck, and don't deserve to call themselves winter at all.

Chin can hear Danny's voice reiterating his points so clearly in his memory that it almost feels real, as if Danny is there on the plane sitting right next to him. Loud, brash, larger than life, comforting in his discourse. Arms and hands moving as he speaks.

He misses every single aspect, even the less than ideal ones, of Danny, and knows that they all do. That none of them have gotten a decent night's sleep since Danny didn't show up for work four weeks and three days ago.

"Grace is going to call," Steve says. "She's going to call, and I don't know what to say to her."

"You didn't tell her you were bringing her daddy home today, did you?" Lou asks. There's no anger, no accusation in his tone. If anything, he sounds as tired as Chin feels.

Steve shakes his head, purses his lips. "No. I didn't promise her a damn thing."

"Tell her we're still looking, that we haven't given up," Lou says. "That we won't give up until we find him."

"We _will_ find him." Chin squeezes Steve's shoulder in reassurance. He doesn't doubt what he's saying. None of them do.

"Alive," Kono whispers, resting her forehead against the plane's window. "We'll find Danny alive." Her voice breaks, and she closes her eyes, the window reflecting a single tear as it slides down her cheek.


	3. Practically Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've taken the wrong Daniel, and have gotten nothing of value from him, but they can't kill him, because apparently Five-0's tech guys are better than theirs. They'll get a handle on that, eventually, but until then, they need to cut their dead end loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cue the 80's bad guys whose motivation is suspect; descriptions of torture (vague in some respects); allusions to torturous acts that are not actually mentioned by name (might be triggering to some as these acts are largely subject to the reader's interpretation; I lead you there, but where you go is where your mind takes you...if that makes sense); disjointed thoughts. There is foul language in this chapter, and there will more of it in future chapters. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your support for this story.

"The op's been blown; we've taken the wrong man," one of the men says, laughing in a way that's bitter and cold.

Danny tries to focus on the man's face. Tries to make his eyes work right, but they don't. They haven't worked right for what feels like years now.

_How long has he been here?_

_Where is here?_

_Where is it he should be?_

"Fuck," a second man says.

"He's Five-0; one of their people put a stopper on the data plug we were pulling," the first man says. "We can't just erase him. We need to ditch him and get out of here, before Five-0 comes knocking. We don't need to deal with them right now."

Danny doesn't understand what's going on, he feels like a ball in a ping-pong match, bouncing here and there, and trying not to fall off the damn table even though everything's whizzing past him faster than he can process.

_Five-0? Isn't that a number? Why would a number come knocking? Knocking on what?_

"He never had the information that we needed. It was a waste of time breaking him. Sooner we cut him loose and get out of here, the better," he says, spits out his disgust. The wet of it lands on Danny's cheek.

Danny opens his mouth to respond. To say something more intelligent than the low moan that escapes past his numb lips.

There's blood on his tongue. Metallic, acrid, cloying. Words don't come. Thoughts slip through his mind like sands in an hourglass, except quicker, and he can't hold onto them, and he thinks that there's something familiar about that phrase - _sands in an hourglass_ \- though he's not certain what an hourglass is, or why sand would be slipping through it.

"Yes, I know, you've got a daughter," a second man says, laughing. "Grace, wasn't that her name?" He's teasing. Danny can hear it in the tone.

_Grace?_ Danny tries to conjure up a face to match the name. He sees pigtails set in dark hair. Hears the memory of bubbling laughter bouncing around inside his head. Sees lips upturned in a smile. None of it is connected. It doesn't make sense.

The man's face floats in front of Danny's, all teeth and tanned skin; a hand, warm and tough as leather, touches his cheek. Danny can't make out any of the man's features, aside from the teeth, which remind him of something catlike. A smile without a face, floating in midair. It's a crazy thought, and Danny dismisses it. It can't be real.

It should be terrifying. It's not. It's numbing, confusing, but not terrifying.

Danny's head lolls on his neck. He can neither confirm nor deny that he has a daughter named Grace. Can barely remember his own name, but he holds onto it like a dog to a bone. _Danny._

"He's practically dead anyway," the first man says.

Neither man has a name. Not that Danny can recall. Not that he's heard. Not that it matters. The men have no faces, either. They only have hands that hit, hold, cut, burn, drown and question, question, question.

"Practically isn't a reality," the second man says, and Danny realizes the truth of that statement, even in his befuddled state of mind.

He's not dead, he's only _practically dead,_ which means that he has a chance to make it out of this alive. A chance to reach Steve, the second name that he tries to keep a hold of in his mind, which is filled with holes like Swiss cheese. Does Swiss cheese have holes? Has Danny ever eaten Swiss cheese before?

"He's unable to identify any of us," the first man says. "Probably doesn't even remember his own name. If we kill him, Five-0 won't stop searching for us, though, and we don't need that kind of heat. It'll scare off future clients."

"Do we have eyes on the Daniel that we want?" the second man asks.

"Yes. Arrangements for his capture and detainment have already been made by the others," the first man says. "We just need to tie up loose ends here."

There's a hand on Danny's cheek, patting it almost affectionately. It feels like acid, and he flinches away from the touch. That hand has done bad, horrible things to him. Things that he can almost fully remember.

Danny feels like a yo-yo trying to follow the conversation. None of it makes any sense.

_A Daniel that they want?_

_What does that mean?_

_Does it mean that they've taken me by mistake?_

_A case of mistaken identity?_

That's funny, because he doesn't really know who he is, other than the name, Danny.

He has no identity. The hands, and their burning, drowning, touching, poking, prodding...have taken that from him.

He only knows that his first name is Danny, and that there's a second name he needs to hold onto. _Steve._

He doesn't laugh.

Danny tries to jog his memory - what's left of it. Tries to go back to the last thing that he _can_ remember to prove to himself that there is something left of the him that existed before this dark place, and the countless men with their evil probing hands started their work on him. To prove to himself that he's more than just a first name. More than just a case of mistaken identity.

The last thing he remembers...the last thing he remembers is... _water; the echoing of children's laughter in a windowless room; the scent and sound of sizzling flesh; burning his hand on the kitchen stove when he was five, and again when he was eight, trying to warm up soup for his mother when she was sick; drinking a beer with Steve; kissing Steve on the lanai, a punch in the gut feeling coursing through his body; drowning in the ocean, wave after wave crashing over his head, hands holding him down, keeping his head under the water; gasping for air, throat burning, the rusty taste of blood fresh on his tongue._

"Fucker's so out of it, he can't even track," the second man says, laughing, pushing Danny's head toward the floor.

"Shit, waste of time," the first man says.

The hands are murder. They cut and hack. They turn Danny's eyesight red and green. They steal the light, and bring endless darkness, even as they guide the water and take, take, take Danny's thoughts, his memories, his life.

"We gotta fly," the second man says.

Danny can only think of Steve then. It's odd. _Fly. Steve._ The man's name burns bright in his mind's eye. It's a blood orange in color, before the hated, pervasive green takes over.

He has to get to Steve, because Steve can kill a man with his bare hands, can resurrect Danny's dead memories, piece by piece. Glue them back into place. If he's remembering Steve correctly. _Blood orange. Flying. Steve._

"His brain's fried," the first man says, laughing, crouching down to stroke Danny's face with a finger that had sliced, not skin, but memory, from Danny one stroke at a time. Peeling memories away from him like they were little more than layers of an onion.

"And, to think, it was all wasted on the wrong man," he says, fingers twisting in Danny's hair, pulling, yanking hair out at the roots, letting Danny's head fall back against the cement floor. "Fuck."

"At least we got something from him," the second man says. His hands push at Danny. "Practice." The laughter is jarring. "And, if Five-0 is ever our target in the future, thanks to this one, we'll already have plenty to go on." The hands are touching him, gently, hard, possessively.

These hands are toxic. They'd spread poison through Danny's veins, had soldered, and carved away at the memories, trying to pry some loose that had never existed in Danny's head in the first place, and had knocked others loose, sent them rattling to the floor like scattered nuts and bolts, some rolling, rolling, rolling too far away for Danny to regather himself; they'd fallen into cracks too small for his fingers, blunt and fat, to burrow into and retrieve.

But Steve's fingers - Danny can picture them now, long, thin, skilled, and they don't scare him - are competent. They're deft and thin enough to dig into the smallest of crevasses and find the nuts and bolts of memory that Danny's lost. They're good, strong fingers. Stronger than those that had pried Danny's memories from him in the first place.

"Let's take him back to that rock he calls home," the first man says, lifting Danny's chin with a finger, looking him in the eye.

Green swamps Danny's vision, and he closes his eyes, but the green follows him even there. It seeps in past his closed eyelids, and sinks into his brain.

The fingers clamp around his chin, and Danny's mouth opens. Liquid, like fire, pours down his throat, and he struggles against another drowning, hands pinned to his side, as the second man aids the first in this ritual that Danny's come to hate.

"Shit, he's shaking like a fucking leaf."

Danny can't breathe. Can't think. Can't tell which of the men is talking, which is holding him down. Which one of them is about to reach into his brain to remove another part of his mind.

"Fucker probably thinks we're going to dunk him in the tank again."

Laughter follows Danny into his living, waking nightmare.

The tank is more of a trough. The kind that farmers use to feed pigs. Long, and narrow.

Danny's knees ache in sympathetic memory of kneeling on the cold, unforgiving cement for far too long, head held underwater until his lungs felt like they were going to collapse. His scalp protests the painful memory that flares in Danny's mind as the sensation of drowning blocks out all rational thought. He can feel the fingernails scraping, gouging skin, and fingers taking out fistfuls of hair when he'd fought to lift his head out of the water so that he could breathe.

There's one, small rational part of himself which knows that's not what's happening now, that, instead of being drowned again, he's been made to drink the poison that burns away thought, and removes his ability to move.

The rational part of his mind is cowering in a corner of his mind, watching, biding its time until Danny has full control of his faculties.

The irrational part of his mind doubts that will ever happen again, because he's drowning in fire, and the men who have him have made it abundantly clear that his memories are theirs to take, his mind, their playground, his body, theirs to do with as they please.

"Just calm the fuck down," one of the men says, lips brushing like a moth's wings against the lobe of Danny's ear, making him shiver even more as the numbing, mind-sucking poison starts to kick in.

"Fuck, I'll be happy when this is over, maybe we should just..."

Danny doesn't hear the rest of the conversation. He's trapped inside his head, underwater, darkness descending, and he's floating, body moving independent of his own will, ears stopped up, mouth filled with a liquid that drowns, but doesn't kill, even as it strips him of all that he is once again, leaving him vulnerable and alone, clinging to the only thing that matters...his name. Danny.

He doesn't know how many times he's been subjected to this liquid death, but it's far more familiar than it should be.

He holds onto two things as he's moved: his name is Danny, and, if he survives this round of drowning, he must find someone. Someone important to him. Someone who can piece him back together again, like Humpty Dumpty and all the king's men. Though, now, he can no longer remember the name of the man he needs to find, just the blood orange color of it.


	4. Channeling Danny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kono doesn't believe that Danny's dead, but she needs proof.

Kono stills her shaking hands by clenching them into fists, and closing her eyes, picturing the blank faces of those who've harmed Danny, imagining putting a fist through each of them, taking their heads off the way they'd beheaded whoever else it was that they'd taken besides Danny.

That twisted, mangled torso can't belong to her friend. She won't let it.

Picturing the death of Danny's torturers doesn't help. Only solidifies the fact that their lead hadn't panned out, or they'd simply been too late, and Danny had been taken somewhere else to be further tortured.

Whoever has Danny is one step ahead of them, and they're several steps behind. Hours, days, weeks behind.

She watches Charlie Fong process the evidence, waits for him to confirm the worst of her suspicions, though she doesn't need confirmation, because she already knows what's happened to Danny, knows, in her heart that he can't be dead. Not yet.

She can see and feel it - the torture; Danny's pain. The evidence, even unprocessed tells at least part of the story.

_"He's a fighter."_ Lou's words, spoken quietly, before they'd even landed in O'ahu, keep reverberating through Kono's mind.

They offer none of the comfort that they're supposed to, because, if the torso they'd uncovered is anything to go by, that man had been a fighter, too. He'd died. If he was even half as stubborn as Danny, that didn't bode well for her friend at all. Aside from Steve, Danny's the most stubborn person Kono knows.

"Kono, you should go home, get some rest, I'll call you as soon as I know something," Charlie says without looking up from his work.

"I'll go home and rest as soon as we get Danny home," Kono says.

She feels like she's channeling Steve. Channeling Danny, if their roles were to be reversed, and it was Steve who was missing.

Danny hadn't gotten much sleep during those times when Steve had been missing, forgoing sleep in lieu of working tirelessly to get Steve back. It's the least she can do for her teammate, her friend, her brother. Danny would do the same for her, for any of them.

She's tired, can see the reasoning behind going home and resting, or even going back to headquarters, though Steve has sent them home, told them not to return for eight hours. She can see the importance of it, but right now it doesn't make sense. Only one thing does. Confirming what she knows. Confirming that it's _not_ Danny's blood on that serrated knife, and, therefore, he isn't dead.

Danny's torso isn't marred with burns, a bloated, decaying gray. It's not that hunk of flesh lying on Max's table, being carefully opened, organs removed and weighed while the medical examiner speaks tonelessly into a tape recorder, all facts, no emotion, as he details the statistics surrounding the torture, mutilation and death of their nameless victim.

Had the man been a victim? Had he brought his death upon himself? Will Danny have any of the answers they need when they find him? Answers not uncovered under Max's skillful scalpel, that is.

"You're not going to be of any use to him if you're so tired that you fall asleep on your feet," Charlie says, focused on something that he's looking at under the microscope. He frowns, adjusts the scope, and Kono moves into the room, stands behind the lab tech scientist.

"Crowding me isn't going to speed up the results," Charlie says.

"Sorry." Kono backs up, leans against a wall to wait. "I...we need answers."

"And I'll get them for you, but things like this take time, and I'd work better if you weren't breathing down my neck." Charlie spins around on his chair to check another diagnostic test that he's running, ignores Kono completely as he records the data.

"I can't leave," Kono says in a voice that's far steadier than she feels. "Not until I know something." _Not until I know for sure that it's not Danny that Max is cutting into._

"It's not him," Charlie says, answering Kono's unasked question. "The body doesn't belong to Danny. Blood type doesn't match."

Kono's knees buckle in relief, and she presses up against the wall to keep upright, vision going gray around the edges and then black before returning to her in pinpoint clarity.

_It's not Danny._

She clings to that fact as though it's a lifeline. In a way it is a lifeline. One that will keep her going until Danny's found and returned to them.

She knows that Danny won't be coming back undamaged, but doesn't dwell on that. Instead, she focuses on the positive that Charlie's given her.

The body on Max's autopsy table is not Danny's. It's all she's got. All any of them have got. But, for now, it's enough.

 


	5. Curry Powder and Freshly Squeezed Lemon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny isn't sure of what to make of his new surroundings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very liberal interpretation of synesthesia (this isn't how it really manifests, and Danny's mind is just processing things differently than how it did before the torture). I love the color green. I have no idea why these words and names taste and smell the way they do to Danny. Sometimes I would solicit flavors and scents from whoever was in the vicinity at the time I was writing; others, I would just go with whatever popped into my head. There really is no rhyme or reason for it. Hermit crabs really are fascinating to watch in the early morning, as the sun is rising.
> 
> Also, Danny doesn't remember Coleridge, I am citing the poem (obsessive, I am).

It's dark. He's lying on his side, in pain, though he feels hollow as an empty wooden casket. None of that is new.

There's something soft, gritty, beneath his cheek. Not cold and hard. The hands are gone, and so are the voices that they carry.

That's new, and, though Danny's eyes don't open, and his body doesn't respond to the simplest of commands that his beleaguered mind sends it, he takes a small measure of solace in that, at least his environment has changed.

He wonders if, when he does manage to open his eyes, he'll see the ever-present green, or if he'll see a different color. A color that won't hurt and blind him. A color that won't remind him of death and screams, of blood and pain.

_Blue. Brown. White. Yellow. Orange. Purple. Pink. Puce. Magenta. Maroon._

Danny giggles, it comes out sounding like a sob, as he chants the names of different colors in his head, trying to remember what they look like. The only color he can see with any clarity, though, is green.

Yellow, brown, pink, they all look the same now, they all take on the same deadly shade of green that makes Danny want to bury himself underneath the sand that he can feel sifting beneath his cheek.

Maybe the hermit crabs will take him down into their nest and protect him with their pincers. They're a nice washed out brown in color that blends in with the sand in which they take refuge, coming out only to worship the morning sun. Danny thinks he remembers them.

They're skittish. Danny will fit right in with them. He's skittish, too. Can't remember being any other way, though he thinks maybe he was different before the hands started drowning him, before the green took over his vision and left him blind to everything else, before the slime-covered arm started speaking to him, warning him to get out, get free, to leave the hands and their incessant drowning behind.

He's thirsty. Always. For all of the drowning he's been subjected to, Danny never gets enough water to drink. His thirst is never quenched.

It's a strange thing, and Danny's reminded of a handful of lines from a poem: "Water, water every where, and all the boards did shrink, water, water every where, nor any drop to drink." (Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 1834)

Funny how Danny should remember those lines when he can barely remember his own name, can't remember the name of the person he needs to find, the one who holds the key to restoring the memories that were plucked from him like apples from a tree. Much too easily. He doubts it'll be as easy for him to get those memories back. A plucked apple cannot regrow itself.

Morning comes. He can feel the sun touching his cheek. This is new, too. He hasn't felt the sun in ages. Only cold and windowless darkness, and, of course, underlying it all the green, like sea-glass made from empty beer bottles and months, years being bashed and battered against rocks and sand by the ocean's continual undulations.

He'd found a bit of sea-glass once, on a shore that he knows he should remember, because it belonged, belongs, to someone he knows, the someone he needs. He'd had it fashioned into a necklace, given it to someone with soft, dark hair that feels like silk when it slips through his fingers like memories through the holes in his mind.

It was pretty, like the girl, when the sun hit it just so, the green of it soft and understated, like true jade, almost white in its purity. He knows he should hold onto that memory, something tells him that the girl is important, but his name (Danny) almost falls away from him when he reaches out to keep hold of the silver chain that holds the bit of sea-glass dangling from her slender neck.

He knows that the man he needs to find will return the girl to him, so Danny lets go of the memory, like he'd let go of the others, let them fall from his head into the water. It's easier that way, will let him keep hold of the one thing that, at the moment, matters, his own name.

Something tells him that, if he loses his own name, he won't get any of the lost memories back. They'll continue to elude him for the rest of his life, however long or short that is, and his life will cease to matter, because he won't have a name, won't have an identity, or a purpose. He'll have nothing.

His body returns to him in stops and starts, lips dragging against the sand. It's dry. Tastes like salt and the smell of rain, makes him thirsty. He's always thirsty.

He opens his mouth, drinks in a mouthful of sand, sputters, and pushes up on arms that shake so hard he almost falls flat on his face, but he somehow ends up kneeling in the dirt, blinks in the sight of the sand.

It's white, though Danny sees flashes of the hated green, and his stomach roils, and rebels, expels the last dregs of the poison that was forced into him. It burns, spits and hisses on the sand. Danny's vision greys.

It's hard to breathe, but he pushes backward, falls on his ass, scoots back, back, back from the pool of acid until he hits something hard and unforgiving, and he looks up, up, up. Catches glimpses of blue, white, grey through fronds of green.

"Palm tree." The word is on the tip of his tongue, sizzles there before Danny chokes it out on a ragged breath. It's the first word he's spoken that hasn't been tainted by drowning. A minor victory.

He's exhausted, and dizzy, and the palm fronds are swaying gently in the breeze. He turns his head in one direction. Doesn't know if it's left or right, because he's lost the memory of what those are, what they mean, if he'd ever known the difference between those two designations in the first place.

There's blur of blue before the green flashes start. The ocean. Another memory picks at his brain. Gives him a headache. Makes it worse.

"Ocean," he tries the word out, pushes it through lips that are cracked, past a tongue that could give the Sahara a run for its money.

It tastes like pepper. Danny has the vague notion that it shouldn't taste like anything, that a word should be a word and nothing else. It's a funny feeling, but Danny doesn't have the strength to laugh, and his stomach doesn't like the thought of laughter, because it hurts, and laughter will undoubtedly cause it to hurt even more.

Danny turns his head in the other direction. Green obscures his view of shiny black and silver, of blurry images rushing past too quickly for his eyes to keep up with. _City?_

"City," Danny whispers. The strange sounding word doesn't taste like anything at first, but then it comes to him. Bubblegum. Another word for him to catalog, to try to add to his depleted memory banks, just so long as it doesn't push out the one word that matters most - Danny.

"Danny." The word comes out hoarse and almost too low for his own ears to hear. It tastes like cinnamon and smells like gunpowder.

Danny closes his eyes and tries to hold onto the taste and smell of his name, just in case he loses the sound of it, the memory of how to move his lips and tongue in the saying of it. If he loses, Danny, he can hold onto cinnamon and gunpowder.

The girl with the sea-glass necklace around her neck. Her name, Danny thinks it tastes like vanilla and smells like burnt chocolate chip cookies.

The person he needs to find...he tastes like...Danny rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to capture the fleeting memory. He tastes blood, but it's not the flavor that he's searching for. It niggles at the edge of Danny's thoughts; it's tangy and spicy. Curry powder. Danny needs to find curry powder and freshly squeezed lemon. He needs to find...Steve?

 


	6. Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you need to borrow a little faith from someone you love. (Lou Grover's perspective)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. I wasn't sure what to do for Lou's point of view. This features prayer, and thoughts of faith. I think it's perfect (in a way) for Christmas (it's still Christmas day here, for another minute). Mele Kalikimaka!

Lou goes home, kisses his wife, and kids, careful not to wake them.

It's late, and he's happy to be home, though he wishes that he was still out there, looking for Danny, bringing him home to his little girl, and boy, to the Five-0 'ohana.

He hadn't realized just how central the man was to the team until Danny disappeared, and it's like a punch to the gut. Sharp and cutting. Danny's stubborn to a fault, argumentative, and he knows how to piss a guy off, but he's got heart.

_Hell_ , Lou thinks, _he is the heart of Five-0_.

He sits on the edge of the bed, not yet ready to climb beneath the covers, and find a few hours of peace that sleep will provide. He doubts that Danny's at peace right now, though.

Hopes to god that the man isn't at peace, even if it means that Danny's in pain, because the only peace that Danny could possibly have if that mangled torso that they found is anything to go by, is a permanent peace, or one that's temporary, a brief reprieve gained through the loss of consciousness, between bouts of extended torture.

Renee stirs in bed, turns toward him and rests a hand on his knee. "You find him yet?"

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," Lou says, smiling in the dark. He can just make out the outline of his wife through eyes squinted against the darkness.

Renee squeezes his knee, and pulls back the covers, pats the space between them. "Come to bed."

Sighing, Lou slides into bed beside Renee, thankful that she's his, that she hasn't turned her back on him yet and gotten a divorce, or sent him packing. Not many marriages survive in his line of work.

He pulls her close, kisses her hair, her forehead, her lips, loses himself in the scent of his woman. Strong. Bold. Beautiful. Tries to push out the ugly images of that damned torso that they'd found in their search for Danny.

"Sometimes I wonder why you bother to put up with me, and these lousy hours that I keep," he says for lack of something better to say, and not wanting to admit to defeat, again, because they haven't - _he_ hasn't - found Danny yet. It's been a little over a month, and the only lead they had was a bust.

"I'm a saint," Renee says, deadpan. Lou can hear her rolling her eyes, just like their daughter, Samantha does when he says something she's deemed stupid or overly protective, or too 'fatherly'.

"Yes, you are," Lou agrees, kissing her temple, holding her close, breathing her in.

He listens to her even breaths, the steady beat of her heart, and feels safe, and at peace, and like maybe it isn't the end of the world, and it's okay to sleep for a couple of hours before he starts looking for Danny again.

She's his rock, and it's in that moment that he realizes that Danny's Steve's rock. It's a sobering thought, and he wonders why he hadn't realized it before. He's almost certain that the cousins have known it all along. He wonders if Danny and Steve know it yet.

"You'll find him," Renee says it like it's fact, cutting straight through the bull, and his failed attempt at distraction. "You'll find him and bring him home to his family."

Lou wishes he had his wife's level of confidence in him, and the team that he works with, that he had more than trite, over-sympathetic, empty platitudes to say to the people who knew Danny best. That he could take back his hastily uttered, _"He's a fighter."_ and exchange it for something that means something, that shows he knows Danny at least half as well as the others do.

"Get some rest," Renee says, tugging his arms around her, resting her head on his chest, rolling into his embrace. "Things'll be clearer come morning."

He closes his eyes, tries to lose himself in the rhythm of his wife's breathing, the beating of her heart, and the strength of the conviction behind her words. Tries to kick the image of that damned decaying torso out of his mind, and will his stomach not to churn when his mind keeps playing tricks on him, supplying him with grotesque images of Danny's head lying in a puddle of dirty, blood-filled water, blue eyes glazed over and unseeing as they stare blindly at the green foliage that blankets the island of Molokai.

Renee's lips are moving against his chest, and he can hear her whispering a prayer, fingers twined in his, as though bringing him along with her to approach god's throne. She has faith, and right now Lou needs to borrow some of it.

Taking a deep breath, Lou does something he hasn't done in a long time, and sends up a silent prayer for Danny, hoping that god will hear and answer, yes, that he won't remain aloof and distant, that he won't turn Lou away.

_Help us find him,_ Lou sends the words up to a god he's turned his back on for awhile now. _Bring him home. Alive._

 


	7. The Invisible Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny's invisible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not as existential as the chapter title and the summary makes it out to be (I think). 
> 
> KomodoQueen asked for the next chapter, and as it is the next day, only an hour into the next day (here), I thought I would accommodate. Steve will be showing up very, very soon.

Danny doesn't know how much time has passed since he woke up on the beach, alone and not alone. Time tastes like river water. Rusty and cool, faintly of fish and rocks.

"Time," he sounds out the word. It feels funny on his lips, and dry, thick tongue, which barely move.

He's been sitting underneath the palm tree for hours or days. The sun has been inconsistent, the clouds often dulling it, and Danny's eyes don't always like to stay open when he tells them to. Sometimes he forgets to tell them to open.

He thinks he's blinking, and when his eyes open again, there's darkness, or light, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. He's not entirely certain that he hasn't lost time in the process of blinking, that it's sometimes taking longer for him to blink than the half a second that it should.

He feels like maybe he should stand up, and leave this place, find the person that he knows he needs to find, even though he no longer remembers the man's name.

He should get up and leave the tree, and the beach, maybe walk into the city, but his legs are not responding, other than to tuck themselves up against his body for protection against the invisible hands that haunt him, and threaten to drown him even here where he's sitting safe and secure on the sand, the hermit crabs not yet having secreted him away in one of their tunnels.

Danny's mind drifts, like the breeze that makes the palm trees sway, and the too-green fronds whisper overhead. They're saying things to Danny. Whispering secrets to him that he's afraid to listen too closely to, because he knows that, when he does, the hands will return, and they'll try to remove those secrets from his mind if they find out that he's heard them.

_You can't keep any secrets from us, Danny._

He scrunches his eyes closed as tightly as he can, and huddles down so that his shoulders cover his ears, muffling the sound of the whispers coming from the trees, and the people that mill around him. He can sense them there, but they don't see him, he doesn't see them either.

He's invisible.

_The invisible man._

That sparks a memory, and Danny tries to follow the thin thread of the memory to its source, tries to hold onto it, but it's like trying to race to the end of a rainbow. The thought keeps moving further and further away from him, and he can't follow it to its end. Doesn't know what it means - _the invisible man_ \- other than that it feels lonely, and he thinks that he should stand up and find the man with the power to restore his memories, so that he can figure out what the invisible man, a dark shadow in his mind's eye, means. If it's something that matters.

It's impossible for him to move his legs, though. They're numb, and his head hurts when he tries to think, or move.

His body aches, and he really just wants the color green to leave him alone. It tastes like piss and volcanic ash, and it's always there, more constant than the hands had been, because, unlike green, they'd left him alone sometimes, hadn't constantly plied themselves to mining his memories; searching for gold in a mine that wasn't there.

The hands have left him alone now, though he can still feel them from time-to-time, lurking. Touching him, holding him, poking and prodding him. They're there,lying in wait for him, just beneath the surface of his mind, where green has taken up permanent residence.

It's terrifying, but Danny doesn't understand why, because the hands had only done what they'd needed to do. That's what they'd said, and as he had nothing else to go on, other than their word, he'd believed them, because they'd never once not delivered pain that they'd said they would, nor had they ever broken a promise, not matter how terrible a promise it was.

_None of your secrets are safe from us, Danny._

He'd needed the torture they'd given him. Needed the drowning, because it had purged him. Cleansed his mind, and his body. Broken him and made him into something new.

_We'll make you better, Danny. Just give us what we want, and we'll take away the pain._

He doesn't feel new, though. He feels broken, and small and lost, like he's missing a vital part of himself, though he still knows that his name is Danny, and that he's looking for someone who can help find the part of himself that he's lost, a person whose name tastes like curry powder and smells like freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Hopefully curry powder and lemon juice will find him before he disappears beneath the sand with the hermit crabs, because Danny knows that when that happens, he won't come back up for air. He'll drown for good. Sand clogging his lungs, and taking the last of his memories in a way that water wasn't able to.

 


	8. Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny asks Steve for one thing -- help to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 80's style bad guys mentioned again, along with their brand of suspect crime; someone else is taken, but we won't hear about him again...he will be successfully vanished. If the timeline doesn't add up, I apologize, time is not my strong suit, please forgive me for any inconsistencies regarding that particular issue; this does fluctuate with regard to time and place as Steve remembers some events prior to this moment. Hopefully you will enjoy this. Thanks for everyone who has supported this.

Steve doesn't believe his eyes at first. Rubs them with the heels of his hands to clear out the grit, remove the exhaustion from them, because he's certain that he's seeing a mirage, though the beaches of Waikiki are no desert landscape and he's not dying of thirst.

He's dying of something else, though. Heartache. Guilt. A pain unlike any other that he's ever experienced. Hearing the retort of the gunshot that had killed his father over the phone hadn't caused him as much pain as losing Danny had.

He's always known that he loved Danny, he just hadn't realized how much he'd loved him, and in what capacity, until Danny had disappeared. Vanished off the face of O'ahu, almost all traces of him gone as though he'd never even set foot on the island in the first place. As though no one by the name of Daniel Williams had even been born, which, in Steve's opinion, would have been a travesty.

A world without Daniel Williams is a world that Steve doesn't want to live in. It's a world without color. A world without vibrancy. A world without air.

Danny's house, car, all of his belongings had disappeared along with him, as though whoever had taken him intended to erase every last memory of Danny. Everything that could tie him to this island, to this world.

Whoever had done it, though - and Steve is going to find them, make them pay for doing this to Danny, and to that poor soul they'd hacked up - was good at what they did. It was well planned, and orchestrated, and Steve thinks he remembers hearing something about the existence of this elusive group that erases people, back when he'd been fresh out of BUD/S training.

He'd thought they were groundless rumors back then, fairy tales told to scare those impressionable and naive enough to believe them. He hadn't seen any evidence of the group's handiwork at the time. Didn't believe a word of it.

He knows better now. Understands that there won't ever be any real evidence of what this group does, or the people that they take and torture valuable secrets out of, because they cover their tracks too well, eliminating all memories and evidence that these people ever existed in the first place. Just like they'd done to whoever that torso belonged to. Max was nowhere even close to identifying the man. Could only confirm that it wasn't Danny.

The people who had taken Danny, and that other poor soul, make people vanish. Plain and simple. He and his friends had laughingly called them, _The Vanishers_. Joking about them over too many beers, and shots; joining the rumor mill.

Steve knows that what they'd found on Molokai will give them nothing, though he'd collected every last piece of 'evidence' that had been left by Danny's kidnappers.

The 'Vanishers' have already covered their tracks, and had even gone so far as to erase every electronic trace of the man that was killed, records of everything from DNA to birth certificate, have been erased from all databases.

Danny's life was well on its way to being erased, too, when Steve had finally made the connections, and gotten Chin out of bed at two in the morning to see if what his gut was screaming at him was correct. Unfortunately it was, but Chin and Toast were able to stop the group from erasing all traces of Danny, and just in time.

They'd backed up every last trace of Danny on several thumb drives and an external hard drive as well, and then had done so for each member of Five-0, because it was unclear why Danny had been targeted, and what information the 'Vanishers' were looking for. As Steve, and the others know, it doesn't hurt to be prepared for the worst.

All that was missing now was the man himself, and Steve had known that finding Danny alive was a long-shot, but he wasn't willing to give up on Danny, because he knew that Danny wouldn't give up on him, which is why, at ten in the morning on Friday, four weeks, three days, and three and a half hours after they'd noticed that Danny was missing, Steve is walking along the beaches of Waikiki, following up on a call to HPD about a strange man that passersby had seen cowering beneath a palm tree.

According to one witness, the man had been there going on two days straight, coinciding to the time when Five-0 had flown out to Molokai to find the base of operations abandoned, after Chin and Toast had worked their magic.

Apparently, if Steve's bloodshot eyes are to be trusted, they'd literally just missed Danny's evacuation from the site, and his eventual dump back on O'ahu.

Steve doesn't know why Danny's been left alive, but he's not about to question it now, because it's enough that Danny _is_ alive. That he's not some anonymous, headless, limbless, sack of decaying meat lying on one of Max's cold, hard tables, waiting to be examined by the M.E.

Steve's feet carry him the twenty or thirty steps it takes to reach the figure curled in on itself beneath the tree, uncertain, yet certain in a way that he can't explain that it is Danny, that he's finally found him.

Steve doesn't remember falling to his knees beside the quaking man, or wrapping his arms around him, and there's a suspicious wetness on the cheek that he rests against Danny's bowed head, but none of that matters because it's Danny, and he's alive.

He's shaking almost as badly as Danny is by the time that his senses return to him, and he's aware of, not only Danny, alive in his arms, but of the gentle rustle of the palm fronds overhead, the obnoxious calling of the seagulls soaring over the ocean, and the rising and falling murmur of voices surrounding them.

Danny's thin, and sickly looking. There are burn marks on his arms and back that, though Steve expected to see them, are still hard to take in. There are ligature marks around his neck, hands and ankles as well. Danny's decidedly worse for the wear, but he's living and breathing, and in desperate need of a long, hot shower, as well as a visit, possibly prolonged, to the hospital, followed by months of therapy, and Steve is never going to let the man out of his sight ever again.

"Danny," Steve breathes the name out against his partner's ear, grateful and near tears again. "Danny, it's Steve."

"C-c-curry powder, and, and lem...lemon juice," Danny stutters, lips and fingers twitching, head bobbing up from where it had been cocooned within his arms. His eyes search Steve's face, and his brow furrows as though he's trying to remember something.

"Curry powder and lemon juice," Danny repeats a little more strongly, voice whisper soft, yet insistent; fingers reaching out to clutch at Steve's arm. Eyes growing wide.

"Okay, buddy, curry powder and lemon juice," Steve says, nodding, hoping that the words will help calm Danny, though he has no idea what they mean, and there's a big part of him that's afraid that the nonsensical phrase is an indicator of some kind of brain damage.

He can only guess at what has been done to Danny. Starvation; torture with water, choking, torches, the use of sound to drive him mad; and he might possibly have been drugged and beaten as well. It's all conjecture on Steve's part. Though there is evidence to back it up, Steve doubts if he will ever know the full extent of what's been done to Danny, because, even with months of intense therapy, even after he's cleaned up, bathed, fed, and his injuries are tended to, Danny will probably never remember all of it. That might just be a blessing.

Danny gives Steve a shaky smile, clumsily pats him on the cheek - his hands are cold, and there's blood beneath his fingernails. He repeats the strange combination of words, and then adds, "Steve." Danny jabs a finger into Steve's chest.

"Danny." He points to himself, taps a finger against his temple, and then taps it against Steve's. "Rem-me-member. S-steve... h-h-elp... D-danny rem-me-mem-ber." The words come out broken, and slow, and Danny's voice is hoarse, and childlike in the simplicity of the phrasing, as though he's forgotten how to formulate complete sentences, or forgotten how to shape the words at all. Maybe even forgotten the words themselves.

It's alarming, and heartbreaking. Even though Steve had known that Danny wouldn't have come through everything without suffering some kind of physical and mental damage, he hadn't expected it to be this bad. Breath catching in his throat, and tears threatening to fall for a second time that day, Steve can only tighten his hold on Danny and nod in response.

"Yeah, buddy, I'll help you remember," Steve says, nearly choking on too much emotion, and crushing Danny to himself, fearful of letting go.

He's not used to this - dealing with too many emotions. This is usually Danny's forte, except, right now Danny's not quite up to the task, and Steve, as his partner, and friend, and maybe-hopefully something more, has to take up the slack.

Suddenly the words, _I've got your back_ , have taken on a whole new meaning for Steve. One that he's fearful he'll screw up, because he's not nearly as good at this comforting and fixing broken people as Danny is.

"I've got you, Danno," Steve says, in spite of the fear that sits like a coiled snake in the pit of his stomach. Kissing Danny's temple, he concentrates on holding the shaking man, on transferring some of his own warmth to Danny. "It's going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright."

"Curry powder and lemon juice," Danny says with a sigh, going slack in Steve's arms.

Paramedics buzz around them like bees, busy in their work to get Danny stabilized enough for transport. They're methodical and stoic in their work, not once commenting or drawing in sharp breaths at the lacerations and burn marks that cover Danny's body. They're efficient as well, bundling Danny off into an ambulance, and off to the hospital fifteen minutes after they've arrived.

Steve hands the scene off to Duke, and, after shooting off a quick text to his team, he heads to the hospital, needing to be near Danny, to make sure that he doesn't vanish again. He doesn't know why Danny's back, but doesn't trust that the clandestine group will leave well enough alone. He wouldn't.

As Danny's injuries are being tended to, on the other side of the island, in Kaneohe, a living hell descends on Daniel T. Williamson, much like the one that Danny's just survived, except it's just the start of the horrors that Daniel T. Williamson will face in the upcoming weeks, as answers are sought, and his memories are stripped away, as every last trace of his existence is completely erased on another remote island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

 


	9. A Bear and a Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny gets two things that he doesn't really know he needs until he has them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that Kono's gift isn't seen as frivolous, or too cheesy, or odd, and hopefully the kiss doesn't come off as too rushed or anything. Thank you all for the support. :-)

Danny picks at the fuzz on his off-white hospital issue blanket, and takes a deep breath. He surveys the room, grateful that it's a light blue in color, and that, finally, after three days, the horrid green that had covered his vision for as far back as he can remember, has faded (for the most part...it still has a tendency to sneak up on him when he's tired, which, at the moment, is most of the time).

Curry powder and lemon juice - Steve, he remembers the name easier now - is slouched in an armchair that he's positioned close to Danny's bed. Snoring lightly in his sleep, Steve's head is canted at an angle that Danny knows will make the man's neck stiff when he wakes. He doesn't have the heart to wake him, though. Doesn't really know if it's his place to do so.

Steve brought pictures. Told Danny stories to help him remember. But Danny's life before the hands, the green, the drowning, is still very much like the pieces of an unassembled jigsaw puzzle. The corner pieces have been found, and positioned- Danny, Steve, Grace (Steve's returned her to Danny) and 'ohana - but the rest of the pieces are scattered across the table of Danny's life, and Danny worries that some of the pieces are missing (gone for good). That, no matter how much Steve helps him remember, there will still be holes in the puzzle, making Danny's life incomplete.

"Hey, Danny," a twenty-something Asian girl pops her head into the room, smile faltering a little as Danny squints his eyes, fingers fiddling with the blanket. The heart monitor registers Danny's unease in a decrease of the time between the steady beeps that measure the beat of his heart.

"It's Kono," the girl says, and Danny nods, remembers the picture that Steve showed him of their work 'ohana. Her name smells like coconut oil, and tastes like sea salt.

Danny conjures up the image of the photograph that Steve had shown him, tries to put a name to each face. _Kono, Chin, Danny, Steve and...Lou._ Danny feels like he's finished some kind of long race...a...marathon by the time that he's finished, each name registering a different taste and smell for him.

He offers Kono a smile, and she enters the room. Steve doesn't stir.

"I brought this for you," Kono says, pulling out a large, plush teddy bear from behind her back, and thrusting it at him. Danny eyes it warily, willing his fingers to let go of the blanket - he's worn a hole in it - to reach for the bear.

Kono's mouth is a thin line, eyes filled with worry, and Danny wants to say something to ease her discomfort, but words don't come easily, and he's not sure what to say, or what to make of the teddy bear. He's not a kid, but the bear is soft and fluffy, and much easier on his fingers than the blanket when he rubs some of its brown fur between his fingers.

Kono brushes a piece of long, black hair from her face, tucks it behind an ear, and gives Danny a shaky smile. She clutches at the rail of Danny's bed, and nods toward the bear. "I know it's a little unusual, but when I saw it...it reminded me of you."

Danny frowns at the bear in his lap, searches its downy brown fur for any semblance to himself. Turning the bear's face toward himself, he peers into its round, black eyes. Seeing his own face reflected back at him, he touches the scruffy shadow of beard that's started to form on his chin. It's scratchy, and Danny's fingers fold into the bear's softer fur, drawing comfort in the smooth texture, and feeling foolish.

His eyes flit to the bear's upturned mouth, drawn on the bear by black thread; the bear's pink, triangular nose; its furry, half-moon ears; and its big, rounded belly. There's a red heart on one of its paws, made of thread. Its light brown fur is curly and silky, slips through his fingers like the water that he'd grown to fear, but he doesn't fear this.

He sees none of himself in the bear, but doesn't know how to tell Kono that. Is afraid that he'll hurt her feelings if he doesn't see whatever it is that she does in the teddy bear. It's soft where he's hard, whole where he's broken. He's a mess, the bear is not.

"I know it's childish, and I can take it back if you'd like, but..." Kono trails off. She's not looking at Danny, but at her hands, on the bedrail. "But," Kono lifts her eyes to look at Danny, and she smiles. Danny returns the smile, uncertain, but wanting to make her feel better.

"I see you in the kind smile, the way the bear wears its heart on its sleeve; you have the biggest heart of anyone I know, Danny, and, you give the best hugs," Kono says, tucking another stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"And the doctors said," Kono says, bites her lip, and looks away, leans against the bedrail. "The doctors said that something like this - soft and...squeezable - would be good for you. Something that you could hold onto, that wouldn't be hard on your fingers, that -"

"It's per-perfect," Danny says, smiling, breaking through Kono's hurried words, twining his fingers through the bear's soft fur, holding it against his chest. "Th-thank you."

"I could've gotten you one of those stress balls, or -"

Danny makes an effort to reach out and touch one of Kono's hands. "It's perfect, thank you," he whispers, the words coming out better the second time around, though they still feel odd on his tongue, taste like paper. Stick to the roof of his mouth.

Kono's hand is warm and soft, and Danny doesn't flinch when she grasps his hand in hers, and holds it. He gets the sense that her hands aren't monsters, that they won't take things from him that he doesn't want to give.

Steve stirs, but doesn't wake, a testament to just how bone tired he is. Or maybe he's just pretending to sleep, to give Kono and Danny a moment 'alone', because Steve's promised (in no uncertain terms) that he's not leaving Danny's side - ever.

If Danny was the man he'd been before all of this began, he'd be protesting, or laugh in Steve's face, force the man to go home and sleep. He's not, though. He lets Steve stay. Lets the man maintain an often silent vigil beside his bed.

Danny has an inkling, some kind of mental itch, that this isn't right, that he should be doing something different with Steve. _Make demands? Force the man to give him some space? Kiss him?_ It's all a jumbled mess in his head. Confusing and headache inducing, and Danny doesn't want to think about any of it, because it's just too much, and Kono's hand feels warm and soft, the teddy bear is a cushion of fluff that makes him feel anchored to his new reality, away from the green and the terrible hands, and the poison.

"What're you going to name him?" Kono asks, chin jerking toward the teddy bear that Danny's crushed to his chest. There's a lightness to her voice that, for once, isn't forced. Her eyes are sparkling with a childishness that's contagious.

Shrugging, Danny runs his fingers through the bear's soft fur, an easy smile forming on his lips that makes Kono's grow bigger. Words that he thinks may be names bounce around in his head, and Danny tries to reach for one of them, something that will suit the bear, but they slam into each other, and bound away from him, skittering off into the part of his brain that is hard for him to access right now. That he remembers his doctor telling him about this is a victory. It doesn't help the frustration that creeps up on him now, though. Doesn't keep the angry tear from slipping down his cheek and into the bear's brown fur when he can't successfully pick out a name from the jumble of names bouncing around in his head.

Kono brushes the track of Danny's tear with the pad of her thumb. "Hey, it's okay, Danny. You don't have to name him now, or ever, if you don't want to."

It's not a matter of wanting, or not wanting to name the bear, but about his inability to tell the difference between the words that are names, and those that aren't. He _wants_ to name the bear, as silly as that is, but can't, and he doesn't know how to explain all of that to Kono. Doesn't have the ability to string the necessary words together. Isn't even sure what those necessary words are, because they're all running amok in his head.

"Hey, Danno." Steve's voice is rusty from sleep. The shadow that falls over Danny when Steve stands is a comfort.

"I'm sorry, Steve, I -"

"What's this you've got?" Steve interrupts Kono's apology, blue eyes locked on Danny and the bear that he's clutching. He's smiling, and completely at ease, and Danny can feel his headache receding.

Steve places a hand on the bear's head, and rubs at the soft fur. Danny has a flash of something that he can't identify, pictures Steve's hand running through his hair, and his breath catches, his eyes zero in on Steve's fingers, and he has an urge to butt his head against them, supplant them from the bear's fur so that he can have them all to himself. It's overwhelming, and Danny drags his gaze away from them only to find himself drowning in the blue of Steve's eyes.

"Danno?" Steve's voice is filled with concern, eyebrows knit together with worry, as he leans closer to Danny. "You okay?"

_Yes._

_No._

_I don't know._

He opens his mouth. It's dry. Words get stuck between the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth, like he's choking. He sputters, looks at Steve's eyes, his moving lips, and is drawn toward them like a thirsty man to a desert oasis.

Danny's not even aware that he's surged forward, planting his lips on Steve's slightly parted ones, licking, pulling, sucking, until he hears Kono's shocked gasp and Steve's desperate moan as the impromptu kiss is deepened. His headache's gone, and so is the confusion that's been plaguing him since he's been found. Though he no has no clear memory of doing this before, it feels right, and good, and like he's finally found himself. He's finally found Danny. Found home.

The teddy bear's squashed between them, Kono's hand is gone from Danny's as Steve's firm grip replaces hers.

"Danny?" Steve's asking, _Is this okay? Are you okay? Is this what you want?_ in those two syllables. Danny's name tastes like butterscotch, and smells like Old Spice, the way that Steve says it.

"Merlin," Danny whispers. It's the name of the bear. A mixture of magic and legend. It's cloves and juniper berry. It's Steve's lips on his, the heat of his mouth, the feel and taste of his tongue as it tangles with Danny's.

Steve doesn't laugh, or shout in frustration. He smiles, squeezes Danny's hand, and presses a kiss to his lips. It's tentative and light, nearly gone before Danny, with his muddled brain, can reciprocate, but he's just quick enough to keep Steve there, to keep the kiss going for just a little while longer.

Words are failing him. His mind and memory is failing him, but this, with Steve right now, is good and safe, and Danny knows that, eventually, everything else will fall into place. It will take time and patience, and there will be many failures along the way, but with Steve's help, and maybe love, Danny knows, in his heart, that he'll make it out of this darkness.

 


	10. The Long Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things may never be perfect between them, but maybe perfection isn't what Steve and Danny need to be aiming for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This does not wrap up every loose end, and doesn't show Steve getting revenge. It might read as a little sappy at the end. I wanted, in a way, for this to reflect the uncertainty of life, how, when tragedy strikes, things don't always end the way that we want them to end. I know, fiction doesn't need to reflect life, but I would rather, while ending this on a somewhat happy note, leave the other details up to the reader, or maybe, if the muse is willing, add onto this in the form of a "Blacklist" story (whoever runs the Vanishers seems like a perfect candidate for Red's list), or perhaps a sequel to this story.
> 
>  
> 
> Do not forget to check out swifters' awesome story, "Fifteen". It is an amazing and intense read.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has supported this story. Mahalo!

Ten days after Steve found Danny, he's released from the hospital and into Steve's care. The physical damage has, for the most part, been taken care of, and healed. Physical therapy appointments have been set up to help loosen and work the damaged muscles in Danny's legs, back, arms, and hands. He'd been kept confined, though Steve hadn't heard this from Danny's lips, he'd had to figure it out by looking at the x-rays and MRIs, and speaking with specialists.

The psychological and brain damage is a different matter, however. Much harder to heal. Danny's brain is sending him mixed signals, and his sensory input is messed up, to put it mildly.

The psychologist, and neurologist's best guess is that the oxygen deprivation, combined with the constant four week long torture had somehow triggered something similar to synesthesia, though it presents itself differently in Danny than it does in most people.

Danny now processes thought in terms of scent and flavor, as well as images, some of which have nothing to do with the words that he's trying to conjure. His speech is halting, mainly because Danny can't call up the right words.

Speech therapy is another appointment that has to be booked, as well as visits to the psychologist and to the neurologist. There are other specialists involved in Danny's ongoing recovery as well.

It's all rather overwhelming, but Steve refuses to give into the despair that's dogging him, and the fear that Danny's mental condition won't (like the doctors are saying) improve much. He's read up on brain damage, and knows that Danny can heal from this. He can learn to talk again. Others have.

Steve will help him deal with the aftermath of the torture; the psychologist will do her part, but she won't be the one waking up at night to coach Danny through a nightmare, or pull him out of a flashback that's been triggered by something which would ordinarily have been mundane. As far as Steve's concerned that's all part and parcel of the partnership that he and Danny have. Danny's had his back, and now he's going to have Danny's, no matter what.

"You ready to go home, Danno?" Steve asks.

Danny's sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, struggling to shove a foot into one of his shoes. The other's already on; Steve had helped with that one, but had backed off when Danny grew frustrated, his face growing red and mouth opening and closing on words that just wouldn't come. It was clear that Danny wanted to do the other shoe on his own, and though he lacked the coordination to do it quickly, Steve knew that it would go a long way toward Danny regaining his independence and confidence in himself, so he'd taken a few steps away and tried not to hover.

That had been almost ten minutes ago, though, and Danny's still struggling to put the shoe on his right foot, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, face a mask of intense concentration. The teddy bear that Kono had gotten for Danny, Merlin, is propped up beside the man as though cheering him along. It's endearing, and heartbreaking at the same time.

Steve's fingers twitch with impatience. He wants to get out of this place. Get Danny home, and settled. Have a simple dinner. Maybe watch some TV, and then go to bed. He doesn't have a lot planned, but he figures that with all that Danny's been through - all that he's been through in looking for him - it'll be enough to start establishing the routine that Danny's psychologist, Dr. Kline, has said is important for him right now.

If there's one thing that Steve's good at, it's establishing and maintaining routines. Something that Danny had, prior to his abduction and torture, ribbed him about.

Danny heaves an audible sigh, and raises his head to look at Steve, brows puckered together in a question, left hand clutching the uncooperative shoe tightly to his thigh. He opens his mouth and Steve can see the struggle there, wants to rush to Danny's side to do what it is that his friend's trying to ask of him, but doesn't.

It's important that Danny tries, that he struggles with finding the right words, even if, more often than not right now, he fails. It's hard to watch, but Steve does, and he gives Danny a supportive smile, relaxes his stance and waits.

"Wou-" Danny stops to breathe, "Would..." his mouth twists, "help...me?" he's panting at the end of the question, and there are beads of sweat on his brow, but he's giving Steve a lopsided smile, that Steve can't help returning with a broad one of his own.

"Sure, buddy," Steve says, and he pries the shoe from Danny's hand, lets Danny guide his foot into it, and then squeezes Danny's knee.

Though it shouldn't be, it's a big thing, Danny asking for help; it's not something that Danny would have done before all of this had happened. He's different. His personality's changed in small, yet significant ways. The doctors have told Steve that it might be temporary, but it could be permanent. There's still much they don't know about the brain, and how it recovers from trauma.

None of this is comforting or especially helpful. Steve misses the Danny he had before all of this. The man who would call him out on his bullshit, and walk a mile with a sprained ankle before stopping to let Steve wrap it. He misses Danny's bluster, and the way he talks with his hands. He misses the arguments. He misses Danny.

The trip home is quiet, and Steve has a feeling that the strain that he senses is rather one-sided. Danny seems content to sit in the passenger's seat, looking out of the window at the scenery. He's smiling much more easily than he had in the hospital. His fingers are buried in Merlin's fur, but there's no tension in the act. Danny is happy. At least as far as Steve can tell. Steve wishes that he could be happy, too, that the idea of this being the new norm for them - a quiet Danny watching the world pass by while Steve sits in the driver's seat and broods - didn't terrify the crap out of him.

"Danny, how would you like it if I invited the team over for a barbecue this weekend?" Steve asks the question as casually as he can. He senses Danny stiffen beside him. "It won't be a lot of people, just Chin, Kono, Lou and his family, maybe we can invite Grace and Charlie, too?"

Danny's answer is a sound of distress. A low keening hum of sorts. He's rocking in his seat, and Merlin's now being treated as the stress-relieving device that he was meant to be. It's mildly alarming (Steve's seen far worse reactions from Danny in the past ten days).

"It's okay," Steve says.

He places a hand on Danny's shoulder, and squeezes. Touch seems to help ground Danny better than almost anything else. He's always been tactile, though, something that Danny has retained through this whole ordeal.

Steve's lips tingle at the thought of what does work better than this when it comes to calming his partner. He can't exactly take his eyes off of the road and kiss Danny now, though, and there's a part of him that feels awful for having kissed Danny at all, because, like it or not, Danny is a vulnerable adult. At least that's what the doctors had said. In Steve's book, it didn't matter that Danny was the one who took the initiative in kissing him, because he hadn't stopped Danny, but had encouraged him. He'd liked it, too, and had wanted more, so he'd taken it.

They'd kissed before all of this had happened, had even fooled around some, but Danny's in no frame of mind to understand the implications of what they're doing, what a kiss with another man really means. What kissing Steve is all about.

"We don't have to have anyone over just yet," Steve says.

Danny doesn't like crowds, feels uncomfortable around the team, and his children. Rachel had taken Grace and Charlie to visit their father once, and had refused to put any of them, especially Danny, through that emotionally fraught experience again. It was heartbreaking, and left all of them determined to do better by Danny.

Danny's humming turns into something far less strained, and he stops rocking in his seat. His shoulders sag a little, and his death grip on Merlin eases a little.

"You feeling better?" Steve asks. He doubts that he'll get a verbal answer from Danny.

There's a nod, and the humming stops. Merlin is once more sitting on Danny's lap, rather than being crushed to his chest. Steve glances at Danny, and wishes that he'd waited until they were home to ask the question.

Danny's face is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and his eyes are glossy with unshed tears. He's staring, unseeing (if Steve's guess is right) out of the front windshield. The smile is gone, and there are lines of stress around Danny's compressed lips.

He's so different, and yet he's still the same man that Steve fell in love with. It hurts, though, to see Danny unable to verbalize the way he used to be able to.

His quick wit, and even quicker tongue are part of what Steve loved about Danny. He loves the man's big heart, and passion for living even more. They're not exactly gone, Steve supposes, they're just suppressed.

He wishes that he had a key to unlock everything for Danny. To give the man back his memories, his ability to speak fluently, and move fluidly.

"Let's just concentrate on getting you settled in tonight," Steve says, glancing once more at Danny, who almost seems relaxed. "How does that sound?"

Danny's mouth opens and closes, and his breathing comes in short gasps of air, but after ten days of watching this, Steve knows not to panic. He knows that Danny's not going into some kind of flashback or shock, he's just trying to find the right word figure out how to say it in response to Steve's question.

_You'll have to be patient. Don't fill in the blanks for him, even if it takes him a long time to finish a sentence, or come up with a word. As hard as it will be to watch Danny struggle with this, it is crucial to his recovery._

Steve can almost see Dr. Kline's words superimposed on the windshield as he waits for Danny's response. At the time, he'd said it wouldn't be a problem, and had felt affronted. Now, though, Steve has to bite his tongue so that he doesn't supply a choice of words for Danny: _Good, bad, stop treating me like a child, Steven..._

Danny settles on, "Good. Thanks." His face is red from the effort, and Steve resists the urge he has to praise Danny for something that used to come naturally for the man. Teddy bear aside, Danny does not have the mind of a child.

The smile returns, though, and Danny leans back into the seat, and he turns his head to watch the passing scenery. Steve wonders if it's a blessing or a curse that Danny doesn't get angry about his inability to articulate, like he would have before being taken. Maybe Steve's angry enough for the both of them, though.

There are no leads on the people who'd taken Danny, and Steve doesn't know what to do with that. If he went chasing after men whose aim was to make other men disappear, what would happen to Danny?

Chin, Kono and Lou want justice for their friend, and for the poor soul who was hacked up - whoever he was - too, but they're at a dead end, and there are other cases that the governor wants them to pursue. Another police detective that he wants them to try out while Danny's on leave - " _Just on a temporary basis."_

The world is moving on, but it always is. Even when Danny had been missing, the world had continued on its forward march, though Steve hadn't really wanted any part of it. He'd wanted to stop the world and pull Danny out of whatever dark crevasse he'd fallen into.

How is it that that song goes? "I'll stop the world and melt with you"? Steve's not even sure what that means, but that's what he wants to do for Danny, for himself. What he wanted to do when Danny hadn't shown up for work what now feels like a lifetime ago.

Danny places a hand on Steve's arm, drawing him out of his unhappy ruminations, a questioning look on his face as he points behind them. Steve's head swivels, and his heart skips a beat. He's passed the house.

Steve can't help but grin. He knows that he must look a little unhinged right now, because Danny's giving him a look of utter confusion, and worry, and his hand is lingering on Steve's arm, squeezing as if to comfort him, or maybe ask him a question.

"It's okay, we're taking the long way home today," Steve assures Danny.

He knows he's still grinning like a loon, because Danny doesn't release his arm, and his forehead wrinkles with concern as he leans closer to Steve. "Okay?"

Steve doesn't need a full on sentence complete with gestures to know what Danny's really saying. He can almost hear and see Danny's rant at his uncharacteristic behavior: _Are you completely off your rocker, because you passed the house up about a mile back. I thought the army taught you better navigational skills. Long way home, my ass. You weren't paying attention to the road at all, were you? Maybe we should've taken Chin up on his offer to drive? Clearly you aren't in the right frame of mind. What am I saying? Of course you're not in the right frame of mind. You haven't been in the right frame of mind since I've met you._

Nodding, Steve chuckles, thinks, _You've got that right, I've not been in the right frame of mind since we've met, because you drive me crazy, in more ways than one,_ realizes that he's having a mental conversation with the Danny in his head (they've had many conversations before, but usually when Danny isn't present) when he should probably be talking to the man who is sitting beside him, in the flesh.

"I'm fine, Danno."

_It's just that you remembered where I live without me having to point it out,_ Steve doesn't say, _and I kind of want to kiss you now, just because._

It's a breakthrough, and Steve will have to remember to tell Dr. Kline about it when he sees her at Danny's next appointment. He'll have to tell her that he didn't make a big deal of it either, though it feels like there are fireworks going off inside of him, and he knows that the look on his face is still, quite possibly, mildly alarming.

Danny's memories have been shot to hell, and beyond. Steve still has to remind Danny who the key people in his life are. Kono helped him create a picture book to aid in that. That Danny remembers where Steve's house is...Steve can't help but think of it as some kind of miracle.

Danny purses his lips and narrows his eyes, squeezes his arm, hard.

"Promise." Steve says. He licks his lip, and takes a deep breath. "I was thinking, maybe we could head down to that little diner that you liked so much...eat dinner there?"

He holds his breath as Danny's grip on him goes lax. A myriad of emotions seems to cross Danny's face, before it settles on what looks like determination. Danny sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and nods, then settles back into his seat, hand now resting on Steve's arm.

Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Maybe they'll be serving those macadamia nut pancakes you like so much. I can't remember if they serve them on Thursdays or Tuesdays."

The chuckle is quiet and so completely unexpected that Steve's not even sure he heard it correctly, until he turns to look at Danny, to make sure that he's okay, to make sense of that dry, chuffing sound. There are tears leaking out of Danny's eyes, and his mouth is twisted up at the corners, and he's got Merlin clutched to his chest, and it takes Steve a heartbeat too long to realize that Danny's not in some kind of distress, but that he's laughing. He turns the conversation (one-sided as it was) in his head, and realizes that Danny's laughing at him.

Shaking his head, Steve gives his partner a self-deprecating grin.

"You...ca-can't...reme-mem-ber..." Danny manages to push out the string of words through his laughter.

"Poor choice of words," Steve says through laughter of his own.

It's his first laugh in...he can't remember when, and that, along with Danny's continued mirth, is what makes him laugh even harder.

Things are a long way from being perfect. They may never _be_ perfect, but Steve has a feeling that everything is going to work out alright. Eventually. With a lot of patience and hard work.


End file.
